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[6:08:50 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
It is, on the whole, somewhat easier to read lives forwards than backwards,
because in that case we are working with the natural flow of time, instead of
against it.

The languages employed are almost always unintelligible to the investigator
but, as the thoughts behind the words lie open before him, that matters
little. On several occasions, investigators have copied down public
inscriptions, which they could not understand, and have afterwards had them
translated on the physical plane, by someone to whom the ancient language was
familiar.

The records must not be thought of as originally inhering in matter of any
kind, though they are reflected in it. In order to read them, it is not
necessary to come into direct contact with any particular grouping of matter,
since they can be read from any distance, when a connection has once been
made.

Nevertheless, it is true that each atom contains the record, or perhaps
possesses the power to put a clairvoyant en rapport with the record, of all
that has ever ( Page 248 ) happened within sight of it. It is in fact, on
account of this phenomenon that psychometry is possible.

But there is attached to it a very curious limitation, in that the
psychometer sees, by means of it, only what he would have seen if he had been
standing at the spot from which the object psychometrised has been taken.

For example, if a man psychometrises a pebble, which has been lying for ages
in a valley, he will see only what has passed during those ages in that
valley. His view will be limited by the surrounding hills, just as if he had
stood for all those ages where the stone lay, and had witnessed all those
things.

There is, however, an extension of psychometric power, by which a man may see
the thoughts and feelings of the actors in his drama, as well as their
physical, bodies. There is also another extension by which, having first
established himself in that valley, he may make it the basis of further
operations, and so pass over the surrounding hills and see what lies beyond
them, and also what has happened there since the stone was removed, and even
what occurred before it in some manner arrived there.

But the man who can do all this will soon be able to dispense with the stone
altogether.

When using the senses of the causal body, it is seen that every object is
throwing off pictures of the past.

We have already seen that, as the inner faculties are developed, life becomes
continuous. Not only can the consciousness of the ego be reached but it is
possible to travel back, even as far as the animal group-soul, and look
through animal eyes at the world which then exited. The difference of outlook
is said to be so different as to make description impossible.

Short of such continuous consciousness, there is no detailed memory of the
past, not even of the most important facts. There is, however, this fact,
that whatever we have known in the past we are almost sure to recognise and
instantly accept, as soon as it is again presented to us in the present.

( Page 249 )

Hence, though one may appreciate intellectually the truth of reincarnation,
actual proof can be obtained only in the causal body, where the ego is
cognisant of his past.

When a man, using the consciousness of his causal body, has always with him
the memory of all his past lives, he is of course, capable of consciously
directing the various lower manifestations of himself at all points of his
progress.

During the stages in which the man is not yet fully capable of this, the ego
can nevertheless impress his purpose upon his permanent atoms, so that that
purpose will be carried over from life to life. Knowledge of this will not be
born inherent in the man, as part of his stock-in-trade, so to speak , but
the moment it comes before him, in any form, in his next incarnation, he will
immediately recognise its truth, seize upon it, and act accordingly.

In the case of a very quick rebirth, the possibility of recovering the memory
of the past incarnation is considerably increased. Diagram XXV,p.147, should
make the mechanism of this possibility easy to understand. There have been a
large number of atoms and molecules, in the old mental and astral bodies,
which have preserved a certain affinity with the mental unit and astral
permanent atom, and consequently a good deal of the old material may be used
in building the new mental and astral bodies. With their assistance, it is
clear that memory of the last incarnation should be more easily attained than
in cases where there has been a long interval between lives, and the old
materials have all been dissipated and spread through the various planes.

We do not yet understand the laws which govern the power to impress the
detailed knowledge of one life upon the physical brain of the next. Such
evidence as is at present available seems to show that details are usually
forgotten, but that broad principles appear to the new mind as self-evident.

It is a common experience, on hearing of a truth ( Page 250 ) for the first
time, to feel that one has known it before, though one has never been able to
formulate it in words. In other cases, there is scarcely even that degree of
memory: yet when the new truth is presented, it is instantly recognised as
true.

Assuming the truth of tradition, even the Buddha Himself, who incarnated with
the definite intention of helping the world, knew nothing clearly of His
mission after He had entered His new body, but regained full knowledge only
after years of searching for it. Undoubtedly He could have known from the
first, had He so chosen, but He did not so choose, submitting Himself rather
to what seems to be the common lot.

On the other hand, it may be that the Buddha did not take the body of Prince
Siddartha from birth, but only when it fainted, after the long austerities of
the of the six years searching for truth. If this be so, there would be no
memory, because the entity in the body was not the Buddha, but some one else.

In any case , however, we may be sure that the ego, who is the true man,
always knows what he has once learned: but he is not always able to impress
it upon his new brain without the help of a suggestion from without.

It seems to be an invariable rule that one who has accepted occult truth in
one life always comes into contact with it in the next, and so revives his
dormant memory. We may say, perhaps, that the opportunity of thus recovering
the truth is the direct karma of having accepted and of having earnestly
tried to live according to it in the previous incarnation.
[7:22:02 PM] Thuan Thi Do: 5. Fohat takes five strides (having already taken
the first three) (angel), and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the
square for the four holy ones . . . . . and their armies (hosts) (beer).

(angel) The “strides,” as already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.),
refer to both the Cosmic and the Human principles — the latter of which
consist, in the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in
the esoteric calculation, of seven principles — three rays of the Essence and
four aspects.* Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism” can
easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two esoteric schools — or rather one
school, divided into two parts — one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the
outer or semi-lay chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a
septenary, the other a six-fold division of human principles.

From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat taking “five strides” refers here to the
five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh
(counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower
planes.

(beer) “Four winged wheels at each corner . . . . . for the four holy ones
and their armies (hosts)” . . . . . These are the “four Maharajahs” or great
Kings of the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four
cardinal points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical
Forces of North, South,

Footnote(s) ———————————————
* The four aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the “Double” of
the body, the triad which disappears with the death of the person, and the
Kama-rupa which disintegrates in Kama-loka.

Vol. 1, Page 123 THE SECRET OF THE ELEMENTS.
East and West, Forces having each a distinct occult property. These beings
are also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material
agents to carry out her decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for
instance, professedly admitted by Science to have their respective evil and
beneficent influences upon the health of Mankind and every living thing.
There is occult philosophy in that Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the
various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease, and wars, and so on,
to the invisible “Messengers” from North and West. “The glory of God comes
from the way of the East” says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the
Psalmist assure their readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the
North and the West — which proposition, when applied to the Jewish nation,
sounds like an undeniable prophecy for themselves. And this accounts also for
St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch. iv.) declaring that it is precisely for that reason
that “we curse the North-Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we
begin by turning towards the West (Sidereal), to renounce the better him who
inhabits it; after which we turn to the East.”

Belief in the “Four Maharajahs” — the Regents of the Four cardinal points —
was universal and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St.
Augustine, “Angelic Virtues,” and “Spirits” when enumerated by themselves,
and “Devils” when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between the
Pagans and the Christians in this cause? Following Plato, Aristotle explained
that the term [[stoicheia]] was understood only as meaning the incorporeal
principles placed at each of the four great divisions of our Cosmical world
to supervise them. Thus, no more than the Christians did, do they adore and
worship the Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but the “gods” that
ruled these respectively. For the Church there are two kinds of Sidereal
beings, the

Footnote(s) ———————————————
* Says the scholarly Vossius, in his Theol. Cir. I. VII.: “Though St.
Augustine has said that every visible thing in this world had an angelic
virtue as an overseer near it, it is not individuals but entire species of
things that must be understood, each such species having indeed its
particular angel to watch it. He is at one in this with all the philosophers
. . . For us these angels are spirits separated from the objects . . .
whereas for the philosophers (pagan) they were gods.” Considering the Ritual
established by the Roman Catholic Church for “Spirits of the Stars,” the
latter look suspiciously like “Gods,” and were no more honoured and prayed to
by the ancient and modern pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the
highly cultured Catholic Christians.

Vol. 1, Page 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Angels and the Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and
neither of them makes any difference between “the Rectors of Light” and the
Cosmocratores, or “Rectores tenebrarum harum,” whom the Roman Church imagines
and discovers in a “Rector of Light” as soon as he is called by another name
than the one she addresses him by. It is not the “Rector” or “Maharajah” who
punishes or rewards, with or without “God’s” permission or order, but man
himself — his deeds or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in
the case of whole nations sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We
produce causes, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal
world; which powers are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to — and
react upon — those who produced these causes; whether such persons are
practically the evil-doers, or simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is
matter,* we are taught by modern Science; and “every particle of the existing
matter must be a register of all that has happened,” as in their “Principles
of Science” Messrs. Jevons and Babbage tell the profane. Modern Science is
drawn more every day into the maelstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no
doubt, still very sensibly. The two main theories of science — re the
relations between Mind and Matter — are Monism and Materialism. These two
cover the whole ground of negative psychology with the exception of the
quasi-occult views of the pantheistic German schools.†

Footnote(s) ———————————————
* Not of course in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who
assures us that “Thought is the movement of matter,” a statement of almost
unequalled absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted
as such. But that does not affect the position that every thought, in
addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective
— though to us supersensuously objective — aspect on the astral plane. (See
“The Occult World,” pp. 89, 90.)

† The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations
between mind and matter may be reduced to two hypotheses. These show that
both views equally exclude the possibility of an independent Soul, distinct
from the physical brain through which it functions. They are: —

(1.) Materialism, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of
molecular change in the brain; i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of
motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify
mind with a “peculiar mode of motion” (!!), but this view is now happily
regarded as absurd by most of the men of science themselves.

(2.) Monism, or the Single Substance Doctrine, is the more subtle form of
negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms
“guarded [[Footnote continued on next page]]